Culture of American Indians Essay

In Against the Grain, environmental journalist Richard Manning (2004) argues that notions of curriculum and property are a groom run of the emergence of agricultural civilizations etymon 10,000 years ago. This is because of the neighborly necessities demanded by dissemination and storage of surplus. Conversely, he points out the contrastingly egalitarian nature of the hunter-gatherer lifestyles and the deeper social ties which result from cooperative food for thought acquisition.Consider for example, the Plains Indians of northernmost America prior to the arrival of European settlers, who would utilize their k straight offledge of buffalo figurehead patterns to haze and herd them, towards a cliff. By diverting the stampede of a enceinte number of animals to their sudden vertical death, they would have got a caloric pay-off through token(prenominal) effort, only required social nerve and sharing, both of the labor and of the proceeds. (Manning, 2004 South Dakota produce Historical rescript Education Kit, 2008) save despite this element of uncertainty in hunting and gathering, Richard Steckel notes that towards the end of the 19th century, the Plains Indians were among the tallest hatful in the world and argues despite the m either technological and agricultural advances they did not have, they were amazingly well-nourished compared to whites, indicating that agriculture should not be taken for granted as the abbreviate of social advancement it is purported be,Manning notes that, in the absence of storage means and preservation technologies, it was insurmountable for the Plains Indians to hoard bison meat. Therefore wealth accumulation was impossible. As such, communal feasting became the matter for social organization, argues Manning tillage on the hand, created social stratification in the form of governance, power structure and other institutions necessary for the management of food surplus.Although there is certain room for promontor y to be made about the dead on target egalitarianism of the hunter gatherer cultures of the Plains Indians, they for sure lacked some of the rigidly defined policy-making structures which characterized those belonging to the cultures of Europeans at the point of archetypal contact. Comanche leadership was rather informal, usually recognisable by consensus rather than by any formal nomination to the position and the senior status of a war chiefs authority lasted provided as long as they were at war. (Bial, 2000) The Blackfoot people maintained a conciliatory social structure, a band, which was in constant quantity flux. As such, social relationships were not stubborn solely by kinship but by residence.In modern times, the national for the difference between hunter-gatherer native-born Americans such as the Plains Indians of pre-modern times and the agricultural Native Americans can be observed in the difference between the Inuit peoples, who live a predominantly hunter-gat herer lifestyle out in the Arctic regions (Snow, 1996) and the peoples of the Cherokee and Lakota.The Inuit are noted for their hard sense of community and flexible variableness of labor among gender lines. The Cherokee and the Lakota, however, have now long been agricultural societies characterized by their severalize and gender divisions, as well as their contentious disposition towards identity and alliance quantum laws.REFERENCESBial, R. (2000) Lifeways The Comanche. New York Benchmark Books.Manning, R. (2004) Against the Grain How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization. New York newton Point Press.buffalo and the Plains Indians. (2008, April 4) South Dakota State Historical Society Education Kit. Retrieved July 3, 2008 from http//www.sdhistory.org/mus/ed/ overawe%20Kit%20Activiteis/Teacher%20Resource.pdfSnow, D. R.. (1996) The first Americans and the differentiation of hunter-gatherer cultures. North America. Eds. Bruce G. Trigger and Wilcomb E. Washburn. Cambridge Universi ty Press, 1996.